You have tied up with a number of companies in India such as Infosys, Godrej, etc. for different services in the recent years, also offering mentorship to start-ups in India. What is the long-term goal for collaboration as far as India’s defence sector industries are concerned?

Rolls-Royce shares a rich heritage of partnership with the Indian defence forces, dating back over eight decades when it powered the country’s first air force and navy carriers. Today, over 750 Rolls-Royce engines across 10 engine types power Indian military aircraft.

Collaboration has been at the heart of this partnership, demonstrated by successfully transferring whole-engine capability, knowledge and expertise in multi-national combat engine programmes. Over the past 60 years, Rolls-Royce engines have been made in India, under license by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), the largest defence manufacturing company in India and a public sector company. Rolls-Royce has also built successful partnerships with leading private sector players like Bharat Forge, Godrej & Boyce, Force Motors and the Tata group and MSMEs and start-ups.

The vision for the future will be not just technology transfers and manufacturing but creating a broader ecosystem that includes co-design, co-development, co-manufacturing, supply chain and support. This entails capability creation and skilling, and at Rolls-Royce we consider this one of our core strengths. In India, we are already nurturing skills, developing local supplier base and building capabilities to match global standards of quality and delivery.

With a growing engineering footprint in India, we seek to establish a robust ecosystem to enable co-creation across the entire value-chain – from research, design and development to manufacturing, integration, maintenance and repair.

Going forward, we seek to embrace opportunities to co-develop and co-manufacture for the growing aerospace and defence sector with the right Indian strategic partners.  This way we not only create value and contribute to local economies but also create an ecosystem that enables the sustainable growth of the sector.

How do you see India as a market for marine engines? Do you have any future plans, like the GSL partnership, in the naval applications?  

The global marine engines market is projected to grow at a healthy rate based on factors such as growing marine freight transport and tourism, but we also foresee strong growth in defence and security sector applications led by a challenging global geo-political environment.

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India’s long coastline of 7,517 kilometres and the new global geo-strategic environment demands a stronger Indian Navy than ever before. The rapid modernisation of the modern Indian Navy to improve its position in the vital Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is testimony